


God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen (And Lady)

by TheGoodDoctor



Series: Squad Goals [5]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Explosion threat, Festive in ways that cannot be explained, Gen, MI6 family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 14:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5337284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoodDoctor/pseuds/TheGoodDoctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's snowing, and Tanner can't even be outside to enjoy it. To be fair, neither can anyone else.</p><p>Something about a bomb?</p>
            </blockquote>





	God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen (And Lady)

Bill has always liked snow. It deadens London. Slows the traffic, muffles the noise, makes the city new. He stares out at it a little forlornly - a winter wonderland, and he'll miss it.

“William? Have you glazed off again?” an aged, soft voice inquires gently.

He smiles, though she can't know that. “Yes, Mum.”

She tuts. “You're throwing me out and you can't even stay on task.”

“It's not me,” Tanner protests. “You know the evacuation orders.” He kicks some snow with his toe, holding his mobile against his ear with stiff, cold fingers.

“Which aren't for you, apparently.” She sounds stern, like when he was small and clumsy and yet another vase had fallen prey to elbows and footballs. “I don't know why you can't come to Kent with me and live with the rest of us for a while.”

“I do, and it's called there-is-no-room. With you and Ed and Mary and three small girls, plus my dog, there's not even going to be room for the cat.”

The old lady sniffed. “Well, seems awfully silly to me. We stayed in London all through the Blitz, hardly necessary to pack you off to Londonderry - at Christmas, too.”

Bill laughs. “Mum, you were six months old at the end of the Blitz.”

“Never did me any harm.” He can imagine her drawing herself up to her full five foot four resolutely. “You'll be safe.”

“As I can be.” His usual promise. He can give her no better. “Say hi to the others for me. Remember, Ed’s going to -”

“- come and collect me and your dog from the station. I'm not senile yet,” she scoffs. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Mum. Bye.” He hangs up, nodding that he'll be down soon at the minion who comes to collect him. He breathes in the cold deeply, checks that no one can see him and hurls a snowball as far he can. It splinters and disintegrates, finally exploding against a tree. It's oddly satisfying that physics still works, in an empty London where nothing makes sense anymore.

* * *

Bill trots down the stairs into the bunker. MI6 is back to WWII bunkers for the second time in as many years, and properly this time. With London evacuated, MI6 works and lives underground from now on. He heads for M’s office.

Mallory looks up when he enters but continues his phone call. “Yes. No, of course not. Thank you, father, I must go.” He hangs up abruptly. “Peasants? In my manor house?” M says sarcastically, rolling his eyes, and Bill snorts as he sets up his laptop on his desk. “How's your mother?”

“Thinks we should all just suck it up, stiff upper lip, near-certainty of capital exploding be damned. She's gone to my brother's.”

Eve clicks in on heels of steel under a small mountain of files. “It's an emergency,” she grouses. “Why are we still doing paperwork.”

* * *

Tesla yowls and pats Bill's face. He cracks open an eye, frowning. “Why do you hate me,” he says conversationally. The cat licks his face, sandpaper on stubble, and he winces. A Q-branch minion tiptoes into view, arms outstretched, hands open and grimacing awkwardly. He allows her to remove the animal from his face, rolls over on the camp bed and goes back to sleep.

* * *

Q keeps picking white hair out of his keyboard, even when Ada’s tail makes itself at home over the number pad. He has no leads, and it's exhausting.

“Anything?” James says as he appears behind the Quartermaster and drops large, calloused hands onto his shoulders.

“No.” Q scrubs his eyes with one hand, sipping tea with the other.

James’ hands massage circles into the base of his neck. Q-branch pretends they aren't watching.

Q looks out over his depleted branch. Over half were evacuated, but the losses he's suffered are nothing to some others - all of accounting, HR and maintenance are gone, alongside most junior agents, and M, Tanner and Moneypenny are all that remains of M-branch. The empty rooms are distinctly creepy - there has never been so few employees on site. “I know there's something I'm missing. I just can't find it.”

“Get some rest,” James says softly. “Try again later.”

It's weird, but this may the longest period of his employment in which he actually gets a healthy amount of sleep. He cannot hide from the concerned gazes of his friends while they're all here. Q concedes. “R, you have the con.”

“Aye, captain.” She smiles. Her hijab today is covered in green binary and impeccable; R looks organised and fresh where he looks messy and tired. The silly Star Trek tradition is comforting, as is James’ hand on his shoulder.

“I'll find it,” Q says as he and James fold themselves into a cot far too small for them both. They eventually agree on James on his back, Q sprawled over him. He yawns widely.

“I have every faith in you,” James rumbles as seriously as a man can when the cats have found him and are wrapped around his head, purring loudly.

* * *

“Sir, no.”

M spins on his chair to face the doorway and Eve, who stands in it, looking afraid. He raises an eyebrow.

Eve shakes her head. “It's too much. This-” she gestures to the bunker, “-is even an underground lair.”

Mallory smiles and pushes the cat off his lap, whom he had been absently stroking as he thought. “My apologies.”

She smiles, then sobers. “Q hasn't found anything. R believes it may be containable if the hub is found-”

“-but we can't find the hub.” Mallory sighs and rubs his forehead. “When you say contain?”

“Bickley might have some broken windows.”

“Only a 13-mile radius of destruction then.” Gareth rubs the scar on his arm absently. “Where's the PM?”

Eve frowns. “Croydon, I think.”

“Damn.” Gareth grimaces. “16 miles.”

* * *

Only a quarter of Q-branch is left now. All junior agents are gone - in fact, only the double-ohs are left. There are maybe 30 people in the bunker.

“You're a _picture_ , Bill,” Eve says merrily.

Flushing, he flips her off. An iPhone makes a camera shutter noise.

“And there's the recruitment photo,” Gareth says smugly. “I can see it now. ‘Here at MI6, there's always the chance to see your head of staff’s middle finger, up close and personal, while he wears a kiss the cook apron and blushes: see fig. 1.’”

“What a shame, sir, perhaps there won't be enough pasta bake to go around. Maybe you won't have any,” Bill says conversationally as he serves a Minion. “And it's your favourite, too. How much would you like?” he asks the Minion kindly. His grin may be shark-like, but clearly not directed at her; he's worked with Minions long enough to abide by the don’t-tap-the-glass-it-scares-the-Minions rules set out by Q, overlord of the socially awkward. “Don't hold back.”

Mallory’s garlic bread bounces off Tanner's temple. “Good shot,” James says smugly.

006, desperate as ever to prove superiority, lobs his, but Tanner knocks it out of the air with the spoon to 002’s approving whistle.

“Double-ohs, eat notoriously little,” Bill says to the next giggling Minion, carefully skipping over the pair.

Q says nothing, beaming at Bill, and gets served. “ _Swot,_ ” Eve coughs.

“Not hungry?” he asks her, mock sadly. “More for me.” Bill takes his place with half the enormous dish before him. “Delicious.”

Gareth grabs a fork and spears a mouthful and before long the others have joined in.

Q shakes his head sadly. “Eating out of the dish like savages.” The Minions nod, using their utensils with exaggerated care. “They clearly don't get out enough.”

“Just because you're all experts at ramen,” Mallory says.

A brave Minion sticks her tongue out at him and the table dissolves into giggles.

* * *

Q punches the air and his branch bursts into jubilant cheers. Eve raises an eyebrow from the doorway, but James just grins. “Knew you'd find it.”

* * *

“Hub secure,” James says over the intercom. Q and Bill high five, still staring at the screen.

* * *

“So you're telling me that, while the PM will make it, you can't see a way that we will,” Gareth says, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “This is not news I like to be woken with.”

“We'll do what we can,” Eve says softly and M's head disappears back under the blanket.

* * *

It's just Q now. He sent everyone else away at least 13 miles. The double-ohs are gone, too - most, anyway. James wasn't even asked. Some battles are not worth the fight.

Q rubs his eyes. Eve had made it clear that she wasn't going anywhere, so he hadn't tried to pull rank and evacuate her. He can't pull rank on M. He flicks on the camera feed and quickly finds what he's looking for; Bill is still beating his resentment into a punchbag. He had hated the insinuation that Q thought him surplus, that he had nearly been sent home like a child, and his words echoed in Q's brain. Why didn't they understand? He's going to fail, and only he should suffer for that. Q drops his head into his hands and fights the stinging.

After what feels like hours, but can only have been minutes, there is a hand on his hair, guiding him into a hug with whoever knelt by his chair.

“Shh,” Bill says softly. “It's going to be okay.”

From him, it's strangely, against all evidence, believable. Perhaps he's just missed letting someone else be in charge for a bit, but Bill's fingers combing his hair helps him calm down and think, despite the snags of cold-chapped and bloodied knuckles on his soft locks.

He leans back. “Why is there blood on your knuckles, Bill?”

He grins ruefully. “May have been a bit angry.”

Q swats his head softly. “Silly of you.”

Bill nods. “Very silly.”

Maybe Q is being patronised. Maybe he doesn't care right now.

* * *

M doesn't ask if it's going to work. It wouldn't have been suggested if there wasn't a possibility of it working, or if they hadn't run out of time. Or better options.

London had three hours definitely if they did nothing. With Q's code, London had three hours _maybe_.

It's never made such a difference.

M taps a button on a black box on his desk, where the five who remain are assembled. “This is Gareth Mallory, M, of MI6. I take responsibility for actions undertaken in this state of emergency.” He pauses. “Feel free to take it up with my corpse.”

“This is Q. I wrote the code used in this emergency. The hope is to prevent the explosion, currently contained to a maximum of 13 miles from Charing Cross.”

“This is James Bond, 007,” he rumbles. “I remain as security and a necessary field agent.”

“This is Eve Moneypenny-”

“-and I am Bill Tanner, Chief of Staff-”

“-and you just _try_ and make us leave our friends,” she finishes fiercely.

“Rather puts us in the shade,” James says, smiling.

“I use my authority to clear the Quartermaster to enact this code,” M says. “In three hours, we will be right or dead.” Eve grabs Bill's hand on one side and James’ on the other. He wraps an arm around Q and Bill grabs Gareth's hand impulsively, trying to comfort, be comforted, and absorb some of his calm. The palm he holds is sweaty and shaking and holds his own tight.

“I enact this code, with these people as my witness.” Q's voice doesn't shake and he hits enter. “We send this audio as evidence of what has been done.”

The button is pressed again and they breath out. Mallory presses another button, and the audio is shared with the leaders outside London.

“Three hours?” Eve whispers.

Q nods. “Three.”

* * *

Two hours, forty-five minutes down. Bill rubs his eyes and returns to holding the sleeping Eve. “I forget it's Christmas Day tomorrow. Probably the most stressful Christmas Eve yet, even taking into account last year with three small girls and a puppy in my tiny flat.”

Gareth turn to him with an incredulous smile. “How?”

He shakes his head. “I still don't know.” Bill sighs. “Ah, I miss Cat.”

“I cannot believe your dog is called _Cat_.”

“Short for Catelyn. Also, I think I'm funny.” He checks his watch. “Five minutes to Christmas Day.” What else is left hanging, unsaid, in the air.

Mallory puts his mug down on the black box. “I had hoped my last cup of coffee would taste better.” He smiles down at Bill, sprawled on the sofa under Eve, James and Q, all fast asleep. It's a look full of love and Bill suddenly wants to cry.

Gareth's phone says 23:59. He carefully lifts Eve without waking her, sitting in her place with her on his lap. He and Bill lean into each other.

Bill spares a thought for those who will find them. If he has to go, wrapped around his friends in a cuddlepile at Christmas seems a fairly good way to go.

The clock beeps the time. They wait.

After five minutes, Bill grins. “Clever boy.” He ruffles Q's hair but he doesn't stir.

“Should we wake them?” Gareth says, pushing Eve's hair back from her face.

Bill shakes his head. Softly, he sings. “God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay…”

“For Jesus Christ our saviour was born on Christmas Day,” Gareth joins, in a deep, smooth voice.

“To save us all from Satan's power and lead us not astray…” James blinks up at them and they smile, before continuing. “Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy, oh, tidings of comfort and joy.”

James beams, turns his head back into the mess of soft hair at the back of Q's neck and goes back to sleep.

* * *

From: Lupin Wonse

To: M

Subject: Recent Events

M,

Our thanks for the work of yourself and your staff this year, particularly in securing the capitol during the evacuation and crisis.

We also thank you for your audio messages, which have been filed.

Although, it is wondered whether your second message is quite...professional? Perhaps you may like to review it before it is permanently logged.

Yours sincerely, and Merry Christmas,

Lupin Wonse

Prime Ministerial secretary

* * *

From: M

To: Tanner

Subject: Shit

May have sent us singing to the PM.

It's too much.

We leave for Peru at once, it's the only way.

Bring your poncho,

Gareth

(Merry Christmas)

**Author's Note:**

> Bill got his dog, Cat, after the events of Tanner, that's a no-no word. He likes caring for stuff.  
> I imagine M singing as rather like that scene in Love, Actually with the Prime Minister and his chauffer caroling.


End file.
